Reliance
by schwarmereione
Summary: Will needs to get over it - because who *isn't* in love with Alicia Florrick? Spoilers through episode 5:11 "Goliath and David"


**Fanfic: Reliance - Kalinda & Will**

**Title:** **Reliance**  
**Author:** schwarmerei1  
**Rating:** M  
**Fandom:** The Good Wife  
**Characters:** Kalinda Sharma, Will Gardner  
**Pairing:** Kalinda & Will, Alicia/Kalinda, Alicia/Will  
**Disclaimer:** I mean no disrespect, CBS, Scott Free, and the Kings own them  
**Spoilers:** Spoilers through episode 5:11 "Goliath and David"

**Summary:** Will needs to get over it - because who *isn't* in love with Alicia Florrick?

Will's first emotion, after opening his eyes and processing the fact that he was still alive, was self-pity that his head hurt. His second was gratitude that someone had thought to close the blinds in the bedroom - meaning that the morning behind them was a tolerable glow rather than blinding sunshine.

He didn't remember much from the night before, but it didn't seem likely that he'd had the forethought for such a detail. That meant it must have been someone else.

His eyes began to search the side of the room he was facing for clues. They were in plain sight: folded up on the chair by his dressing table. He didn't even need to see the knee-high boots on the floor below to know that the leather jacket and jewel-toned blouse didn't belong to Isabel.

As if he didn't feel nauseated enough from the conversion of ethanol into acetaldehyde taking place in his liver, rolling over to find the pillow beside him occupied by black hair, messy, but still in its up-do, and one bare, brown-skinned shoulder peeking out from the sheets was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

The movement of the sheets woke Kalinda. She turned to face him. Will tried to guess, based on her face, what had taken place during the night. He couldn't.

"Did we, um ..." The fear was obvious in his voice, even to him.

"Don't be disgusting Will." Kalinda sat up, apparently she'd managed to find one of the few t-shirts he owned that didn't have a sports logo on it. She was dwarfed by it, hence the bare shoulder showing through the neckline. She yawned. "And trust me. If we'd fucked: you'd remember it."

"Right." Will responded stupidly.

Kalinda tactfully didn't mention the fact that she'd woken during the night to find that Will had rolled into her - pressing himself against her ass and groping at her chest.

"How do you feel?" Kalinda actually sounded almost sympathetic. It made Will wonder if his judgement was still impaired.

"Okay."

"Really?"

"No."

"Not surprising."

Kalinda slid out of his bed and left the room. He registered that if he discounted her bare legs, even dressed in just a t-shirt, he was seeing less skin than he did in her normal office attire.

He heard the sound of the water dispenser on his refrigerator. Kalinda returned and sat down on the bed next to him.

"I was hoping for coffee." He tried for levity. It rang false.

"You need hydration, not caffeine."

It was actually something of a relief to wake to the near-silence of Kalinda's mildly tough love, rather than Isabel's solicitous ministrations. Memories of last night were beginning to solidify in his head.

A second glass of scotch in his office, after Burl Preston departed in a huff of overcoat and scarf, had turned into a third. He'd only waited long enough for Diane to eye him disapprovingly through his office door as she departed for the evening to make his own exit. But she went home; he went to the bar around the corner.

He could just recall the humiliation of Kalinda's fingers closing around his wrist to lead him out of a place where probably half the patrons and all of the bartenders not only knew who he was, but why he was there - beginning to obnoxiously protest that he'd been cut off.

He remembered the cool white leather of Kalinda's car interior as she drove him home; the danger of rising nausea every time she took a corner. "Throw up and you're a dead man." Kalinda had threatened quietly. It had worked. He'd managed to hold on until he was inside his apartment, then abruptly staggered for the bathroom.

He took a swallow of the icy water from the glass. It brought him back to the present.

"You can't keep doing this Will."

He wanted to dismiss her the way he would Diane. Kalinda had stolen his hairbrush and was beginning to untangle her hair. Will just watched.

Will was mesmerised. She was like a mirage. One could almost imagine the creature before him, with her loose hair and dressed in his t-shirt, as an easy-going girlfriend who'd share a six-pack of beer and tangle her legs in his while sitting on the couch watching a game. Then she fixed her gaze on him and rematerialised into Kalinda.

"Nothing you do will change things with her."

Will knew there was no point denying why he was on this binge. Kalinda had been there throughout the affair, listening on the next barstool, while he had fantasies of Alicia that stretched into ever after and babies.

She also had first-hand experience of Alicia's implacable indifference.

She set his hairbrush down and began to gather her clothes onto her lap from the chair. For one terrifying instant, as she fingered the filmy lace of her bra, Will feared he was so firmly friend-zoned she was about to get dressed in front of him. Thankfully she retreated to his en-suite first.

When she emerged, she was fully Kalindaised: boots zipped, assured sweeps of eyeliner, every hair in place. "Comfortable bed, designer bathroom - I'd give you a good review on Trip Advisor."

Will suddenly remembered her standing there last night after stripping him to undershirt and boxers - urging him into bed. He'd actually _begged_ her not to leave him alone. Pitiful sack that he was, it was possible he'd even cried.

Kalinda rocked back on her heels and turned to leave.

"Thanks," Will began, he felt like he was obliged to acknowledge it. "Sorry to be pathetic."

Kalinda turned back to look at him. "At least you stood a chance with her." Her voice was bleak with resignation, her gaze was unnerving.

He felt like he was sitting at the kids' table at Thanksgiving, caught out in some ungrateful, childish, whinging about there not being enough cranberry sauce.

He couldn't meet her eyes. He laid back on his pillow and looked at the ceiling.

When he looked back she was gone. He heard the distant snick as his front door was pulled shut. Will was alone. But not as alone as Kalinda.


End file.
